Water Park

One of the many joys of living in Waltham (I'm being serious! Nothing snarky here) is the abundance of water parks around town. They seem to be everywhere, and they are usually well-attended during the summer months.

Well-attended, that is, when they are open--which is apparently not until noon on Sundays, as I found out yesterday, two eager children in the backseat of my car at 10:30 am.

I figured that waiting in the parking lot for 90 minutes would grow old after about 90 seconds, so we turned around and headed to the cool confines of the new BJ's SuperCenterMegaPlex that just opened on Seyon St. (This wasn't wholly random...Natalia was heading there after the gym, so we met her for some quick errands.)

Yet it was still a hot day when we got home, and the water park did sound like a good idea, so we fed and packed everyone up again just after noon and made our way back to the scene of our earlier disappointment. And despite Andres' lamentations that "the water park is locked!" this time we found it open and pretty busy. Hooray.

For as much as he likes swimming, Andres remains skeptical of the amusements at the water park. He likes the big rainbow arches that are a fixture at most Waltham parks, but he doesn't like to run through them by himself when there is actually water being sprayed. (Natalia did grab him and bring him through a couple times, and he did think that was funny.) He thinks small ribbons of water coming up from the ground are worth a closer look, but he runs away as soon as they become big geysers. So despite the heat, his bathing suit, and all the water around him, Andres was quite content to look at the major water attractions without actually engaging with many of them.

His sister, meanwhile, was quite happy hanging out too. Celia sat on the ground and watched the chaos around her--her brother, all the water going everywhere, and some kids with squirt guns--and clapped and crawled a bit. She didn't even get upset when large clouds of cold mist blew into her face a couple times; she blew it out of her mouth with a big "ppbbbfffft!!" (related: she's been doing this with her food recently, especially oatmeal.) I took her through the rainbow arches (she liked it) and then almost (and unintentionally) had a whole bucket of water dumped on both of us as I wandered under another water-dropping-and-spraying structure. We both made it out ok.

Lunch was served at some point, and then the ice cream truck stopped by and took most of the remaining money in my wallet. Andres chose a Shrek-inspired popsicle. (I find it amazing that he knows TV and movie characters as well as he does--I'm not quite sure where this comes from.) Celia seemed slightly jealous that he was eating something that looked like frozen zucchini, but she never quite reached out and grabbed it from her big brother, so peace remained.

Just before we left both Andres and Celia were hanging out together on the ground. It was a cute sight; Celia sitting there trying to make sense of what was going on, and Andres, the Big Brother, hanging out next to his little sister. It is fun to see these quiet, fleeting moments where they are together and neither one is in motion...it makes me wonder what they will be like in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. Andres is a great big brother to Celia. (I think she knows it, too.)